


two horns of the bull

by kiwisoda



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bisexuality, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Fortune Telling, M/M, Soulmates, Touch-Starved Zuko (Avatar), kinda? it's never stated but they're Meant To Be, they're both a little dumb but that's like. canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiwisoda/pseuds/kiwisoda
Summary: When Sokka sneaks out on their last night night at Makapu village to ask Aunt Wu about his love life, he gets an answer he can't comprehend. Months later, he understands.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 453





	two horns of the bull

**Author's Note:**

> i honestly never expected to actually publish this. it was a pretty self-indulgent thing that i started months ago and just got around to finishing. hope you enjoy!

On the night that Aang, Katara, and Sokka spent in Makapu village following a close brush with its volcanic destruction, the air was unbearably hot. It should have come as no surprise, seeing as lava hot enough to burn the flesh off of a person’s hand came within mere meters of the inn they were sleeping in now— perhaps more aptly, the inn they were _trying_ to sleep in. The stifling heat made breathing feel difficult— it was making Sokka drowsy, while at the same time preventing him from getting any rest. He paced, open and closed windows, put his hair down and then up again, and threw his blankets off of him as he tossed and turned, but none of it was making sleep come any quicker.

He sat up with a huff, finally ready to admit to himself that the heat wasn’t the only thing keeping him up. As much as the unbearable warmth made him miss home more than he already did, there was also a thought plaguing him that couldn’t seem to rest. 

Katara had spent most of the day bothering Aunt Wu, giving her hell as she asked what seemed to be an endless stream of inane questions. His sister seemed to put a lot of stock in the woman, despite his constant protests of her methods in favor of proven scientific ones. There was certainly a heavy dose of confirmation bias weaved throughout the town, but as Sokka sat up in frustration for the third time that night, he knew he had to confront the question on his mind before it ate him alive.

A cool night breeze brushed against Sokka’s face as he stepped outside, almost as if the universe, or fate, or _something_ like that was urging him forward. He let his hair down and sighed in relief, relishing the feeling of the air carrying away the heat trapped at his scalp. He took off his shoes to feel the cool stone of the village streets under his feet as he walked, hardly managing to navigate by only the light of the moon.

Eventually, he turned onto the street of the fortuneteller’s home, noticing that hers was the only light on in the entire village. Sokka approached her door, only to find her already opening it as he reached up to knock. She smiled at him warmly, opening the door wider and gesturing for him to come inside. “I knew that I should expect you tonight. Come. I’m sure you have a lot on your mind.”

Sokka stepped inside, his expression turning indignant. “Hah, a lucky guess! How could you have known I would come?”

“Why would you come at all if you did not believe, even a bit, in my abilities?” The old woman said as she continued to walk, folding her hands behind her back without facing Sokka.

“Just because my sister believes in your magic, doesn’t mean that I do. I just… I just…” Sokka protested, grasping at straws for the right words to say to validate his argument, but ultimately coming up empty-handed.

“You have questions that hold a weight on your heart greater than your pride, I would assume,” Wu replied, unperturbed and self-assured in her words and posture as she led Sokka behind the curtain into her reading room.

“I… Yes,” Sokka admitted with a sigh of defeat as he took a seat next to Aunt Wu, rubbing his eyes with a sigh. It wasn’t easy for Sokka to admit that he had been wrong, or that he needed help. He’d spent his whole life trying to prove that he was fine, and he _was fine, damn it._ That didn’t mean that he didn’t have questions left unanswered, and he was finally in a position to seize upon those answers. This might be his last opportunity to do so.

“Well, young Sokka, tell me. What is it that you want to know?” Aunt Wu asked, her voice calm and poised. Her soothing tone washed over Sokka like the night’s breeze he’d felt earlier.

“Was it true, what you said about me living a life of pain and misery? Will Aang master all four bending styles? Will we defeat the fire nation? Will Katara and I see our father again? What… Um. I know you said something about the person Katara will marry, so… I guess I was wondering…” Sokka trailed off, his face going hot at the mention of such a sensitive topic.

“Slow down, young man. You are asking too many questions, to many of which I do not have an answer. I cannot tell you whether you will succeed or fail in your task, nor can I guarantee how this war will end. However, I can assure you that you will see your father again and that I was a bit hyperbolic about the pain and misery,” Aunt Wu said as she took Sokka’s hand in hers, tracing the lines of his hands as some method of scrying, Sokka supposed.

“And… about the love thing?” Sokka probed, relieved to hear that her earlier prediction had been flippant. He would have liked to have some reassurance that everything would turn out okay in the end, but perhaps that was too much to hope for.

“You will find your true love, Sokka, worry not. Be aware, also, that you will find your truest love among your greatest adversaries,” She said, letting go of Sokka’s palm.

“No way. She’s in the Fire Nation? That’s crazy! When will I meet her?!” Sokka cried out, slapping his palms down against his knees in shock.

“You make many assumptions, young man, drawing conclusions from words that I have never spoken,” Wu said, shaking her head wearily as she began to stand. “Now, it is rather late. We both must address the town tomorrow, and you must be leaving with the Avatar. This is something that you should be rested for.”

Wu stood, and Sokka followed as she began to urge him out as kindly as she could. She pressed her palm between Sokka’s shoulder blades to guide him out the entryway, but Sokka caught the door before she could close it. As much as he hated to admit it, perhaps he was a bit like his sister in some ways. “Wait! You never answered my question. When will I meet my true love?”

The woman looked at Sokka, their gazes locking for just a moment as she gave her answer just before nearly slamming the door on the boy’s fingers. “I have reason to believe that you already have.”

✹

At the Western Air Temple, Zuko was… amicable. Every word he spoke was different from what Sokka had come to expect from him— in fact, everything about him was different. When the disgraced prince smiled, it was shy, and sweet… and genuine. Sokka couldn’t help to notice that the angry tension that Zuko had always seemed to hold between his brows was gone. He also couldn’t help but notice the way that his canines poked out when he smiled. He thought it was pretty cute— at least, he would if they were on a girl!

Having Zuko around wasn’t so bad. The Temple had been novel at first, but even ancient, upside-down ruins only had so many secrets to discover. Once he’d figured out that the Temple was designed to allow airflow everywhere, it wasn’t difficult for Sokka to navigate with a pocketful of leaves to catch the air and guide him and a box of matches to lead his way back. It frustrated him a bit that his clever moments like this almost always went overlooked— maybe it wasn’t always so fun being the meat and sarcasm guy.

Zuko’s firebending was beginning to become Sokka’s new favorite form of entertainment. On cool, windy mornings (which turned out to be most of them in the Temple), he could watch Zuko practicing his bending in the courtyard unnoticed from a high balcony before anyone else awoke. He wasn’t quite sure why he enjoyed watching Zuko bend so much— he supposed that all types of bending fascinated him. Maybe it was just his layman perspective, but Sokka was beginning to find that the different styles of bending had more things in common than they did differently. Even sword fighting— it was all just different ways to manipulate a flow of energy.

What Sokka enjoyed the most, though, was teasing Zuko. The way that he got angry and flustered was really cute— at least, it would be if he was a girl!

Sokka’s begrudging affection for Zuko only grew after they worked together to free the prisoners at Boiling Rock. Conversation between them on the journey there had been awkward, to say the least. Zuko had caught him staring a few times, not that Sokka even realized he was staring in the first place. He was just looking at his hair and admiring the delicate movements of his hands as he powered the engine. It wasn’t weird! Somehow he’d made it awkward, though.

Thankfully, it wasn’t all rough sailing. Sokka was finally getting the chance to empathize, to see Zuko as a person with a complex past that he was only beginning to make amends for. Despite Zuko’s devil-may-care attitude, Sokka knew that he had to abandon a lot to be where he was. He almost wished he hadn’t asked, though, because “guy talk” didn’t quite sit right when it was with Zuko. He didn’t care to hear about Zuko’s girlfriend even a bit, but he couldn’t pinpoint why. Maybe it was just that he didn’t particularly want to divulge his own romantic complications— even as they were travelling to save Suki, conflict roiled in his stomach about her. He couldn’t shake the memory of Aunt Wu’s prediction. ‘ _You will find your truest love among your greatest adversaries._ ’ Whatever that meant, he was sure that it couldn’t mean Suki. It would be easy enough to brush it off and insist that Suki was the only one for him— after all, he’d never believed in superstition. A much more instinctual part of himself, though, told him that he was off the mark.

It had felt cruel to break things off with Suki a few days later, but she had taken it with a considerable amount of grace. It would have been worse, he rationalized, to keep things going with her while he remained unsure. Tensions cooled considerably by the time they’d reached Ember Island, which was a relief. There was nothing Sokka wanted more than a chance to relax for what felt like the first time in forever.

It was surprisingly nice to get to spend more time with Zuko. It was only then that it dawned on Sokka that he’d spent his entire life without ever having a guy friend his own age— hell, any friend his age. It was becoming easy to talk with him about just about anything, or not talk about anything at all. For as much as a chatterbox as Sokka normally was, it was easy to spend a bit of quiet time with Zuko.

That ease didn’t stop Sokka from breaking the silence every once in a while, though. One evening, the two were lounging on a pile of cushions, pillows, and blankets, each reading a book, when Sokka looked up and commented, “Your hair is getting long.”

“Mmm, it is,” Zuko said, reaching up absentmindedly to run his fingers through it. It looked ridiculously soft— surely Zuko must take some special care to keep it so healthy. “I should probably get it cut soon.”

“No! It looks good,” Sokka protested, leaning forward to card a hand through Zuko’s hair before he could think better of it. He was right, though— Zuko’s hair was unimaginably soft, like the petals of a flower. He tried to pull back and offer a quick apology, but Zuko grabbed his wrist and guided his hand back into his hair before he could.

 _Oh._ Sokka swallowed hard as he continued to touch Zuko’s hair, lightly scratching and massaging his scalp as Zuko leaned into his touch like a cat, yet sighed like a content dog. It was simple affection, but Zuko clearly relished in it— Sokka wondered how long it had been since someone had touched him as tenderly as this. Mei came to mind, but Sokka quickly perished the thought at the negative emotions that boiled up at the idea. It hadn’t taken Sokka long to reconcile with himself that his feelings for Zuko might be more than just platonic. He’d planned to tamp it down for the sake of their friendship, but this was getting difficult.

Sokka shifted himself closer so that he could continue his task more comfortably, chuckling a bit when Zuko leaned to the side to rest his head against Sokka’s chest. He could probably hear his heart beating hard in his chest, which was incredibly embarrassing, to say the least. Zuko nuzzled his face in closer to Sokka’s chest as he played with the hair at the nape of Zuko’s neck, which only served to increase his predicament twofold. He stalled his fingers, trying to get his mind to start working again.

“Why’d you stop?” Zuko murmured, and _spirits above_ , that rumbling, sleepy voice was doing Sokka’s mental processes no favors. He couldn’t seem to force the gears of his brain forward, so he took a deep breath and tried to wheel back.

“I just… It’s a little weird. I mean, not weird like… not _stop_ weird. Weird like… not too long ago we were trying to kill each other, you know?” Sokka let out a disquieted laugh. 

“Who would have thought that one of our greatest enemies would be-” Sokka felt his heart drop the moment the words left his mouth. He paled, leaning back from Zuko and scrambling away. Zuko looked back at him with his pretty, honey-colored eyes wide with confusion, a frown forming on his face as Sokka moved away as if he’d burned him.

Sokka’s mind was reeling. It hadn’t made sense to him at the time, what Aunt Wu had said, but the pieces were beginning to fall together. What greater adversary could he possibly be “The One” other than Zuko? Someone he’d already met— a phrase that Sokka had fixated on for weeks after the encounter.

When Sokka had burst out in surprise to Aunt Wu that his “truest love” would be in the Fire Nation, she’d told him not to assume. It hit him now that he hadn’t assumed incorrectly about the Fire Nation— he’d assumed that _she_ was in the Fire Nation. Zuko most definitely was not a girl…

“Sokka, what’s wrong?” Zuko asked, moving towards Sokka as he retreated. The worry, confusion, and hurt, above all, was visible in his eyes. 

Sokka looked away, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to keep his thoughts straight if he had to keep looking Zuko in the eye. Since when had he gotten so pretty? Since when was his vulnerability so attractive? “Do you… believe in fortune tellers? Soothsayers, seers, that sort of thing?”

“Well, I…” Moonlight washed over Zuko’s face, making the blush on his cheeks as clear as day as well as his surprise at the quick change in subject. “I didn’t used to believe in it. There was this old woman in Ba Sing Se that made her living that way, and I visited her once out of curiosity. She told me that she could see that I was standing at a precipice, one where I could either choose to jump and fall or retreat into what I always knew. I didn’t quite get what she meant at the time, but now I do. There’s something she said that I still wonder about, though…”

“Yeah?” Zuko asked, the anticipation and nerves apparent in his voice.

“She said… ‘Love and hate are two horns on the same bull.’ Any idea what that means?” Zuko asked, drawing close enough to touch him, but refraining from doing so.

“Zuko… I… I never really believed in fate, or fortune-telling, or anything anywhere near it. But there was this woman in an Earth Kingdom village who told me something that I can’t get off my mind,” Sokka said, keeping his gaze fixed on the ground. “She said that I would ‘find my truest love among my greatest adversaries’.”

“So, what are you saying?” Zuko said, his voice hardly above a whisper.

“We haven’t been friends for very long, Zuko, and we’ve been enemies for much longer. I think that’s what they were trying to tell us,” Sokka said, finally looking up to meet Zuko’s gilded stare. He pressed their foreheads together, so close that he could feel Zuko’s hot breath over his lips. “Can I kiss you?”

Zuko didn’t answer, but he gave Sokka all of the reassurance that he needed when he pushed him back against the cushions beneath them and pressed a searing kiss to his lips. Electricity shot up his spine at the contact, a reaction that had little to do with Zuko being a firebender. He was suddenly hypersensitive, gripping onto the back of Zuko’s shirt to ground himself as he could feel every point of contact between them.

Zuko kissed like he fought— graceful, yet passionate and bold. He dug his fingers into Sokka’s hair, pulling it from its tie and running his fingers through it with one hand while the other caressed his face. They needed to break apart to breathe, but both were reluctant to do so. When Sokka broke away, panting, Zuko immediately moved his mouth to his neck.

“Spirits, please tell me you’re not still with Suki,” Zuko panted at the crook of Sokka’s neck, one hand still firmly in Sokka’s hair while the other had moved to his chest.

 _Suki._ Sokka didn’t want to think about her at that moment. He felt like he was cutting this close— he had just broken things off with her, and now he was necking with someone else. It wasn’t as if he’d intended to go running off with Zuko the moment he was off the hook— hell, he hadn’t even fully come to terms with liking guys at all until recently!

“No, no, of course not. It’s only you,” Sokka said, pulling Zuko’s face up for a sloppy kiss before continuing. “I know it hasn’t been long, but… Fuck, Zuko. All I want is you.”

“No way,” Zuko managed to get out between kisses. Now that things were finally laid bare, Sokka didn’t want to do anything but kiss him, but he also knew that what Zuko had to say was important, so he let him continue. “I’ve never gotten anything this good in life without fighting tooth and nail for it.”

“Then fight tooth and nail to keep me,” Sokka offered, slowing things down to a tender pace as he planted a light kiss on each one of Zuko’s eyes. He wasn’t sure if Zuko could even feel it on the left side with his scar, but Sokka supposed it didn’t matter.

“For this?” Zuko pressed one more light kiss on Sokka’s lips. “I’ll do anything.”


End file.
